Many Latinos from South America, Central America, and Mexico have made decisions to either legally or illegally to immigrate into the United States of America over the past decades. Similarly, many Asian populations have migrated into the United States of America either legally or illegally. For decades, film makers have been capturing the experiences and stories of the immigrants in the United States of America. The exponential increase in the number of the immigrants over the past decades has led to the surge of high-quality documentaries, like Crossing Arizona, produced in the year 2006. In this film, varying degrees of anti-immigration sentiments and racial discrimination have been revealed. The film has succeeded in unmasking the complex immigration issues, provided a robust educational foundation for civic leaders, business leaders, policymakers and the general public. The documentary aptly highlights the contemporary world’s rich and diverse experiences of immigrant integration to real life and illustrates the human consequences of policy decisions in a manner that words and statistics alone can never achieve. It is true that the immigrants face different circumstances that lead them to immigrate to the United States. However, most of the immigrants are motivated by the same general purpose; to eke a living for themselves and their families. This has created a considerable impact on the social and labor aspects of the U.S. society.
The massive influx of legal and illegal immigrants into the U.S.A leading to the restructuring of the labor in the nation. The immigrants in the film Crossing Arizona provide labor to the U.S farmers who use them contrary to the statutes governing labor in the U.S. In most cases, the immigrant labor force is socially and economically vulnerable. The economic and social vulnerability of the Latino and Asia immigrants have substantially impacted the labor market of the United States, significantly causing changes for the wage-earning as well as the salaried employees (Www.Usa.usembassy.de 4). The stable jobs have been overtaken by the temporary or part-time employment. Consequently, such informal labor and the precarious labor conditions have promoted flexible hiring practices that have created a greater wage gap than it as three decades ago (Fernándeza 780). In addition, of the quality of jobs have deteriorated because of the massive influx of the immigrants. For example, the workers in the private sector have experienced a decline in the average salary (780). Furthermore, the immigration has led to the weakening of organized labor. The population of workers is currently regulated by the service industry, self-employment, and informal sector employment. Manufacturing has dwindled in its relative significance, and the service sector has grown. Www.Usa.usembassy.de (9) reports that the service-related industries accounted for fifty-nine percent of non-farm employment in 1946, and it increased to eighty-one percent in late 1999. Similarly, the immigrants have contributed to the diversity of the U.S labor workforce. For example Hayduk (11) reported that the foreign share of the labor force constituted fourteen percent in the year 2010. Furthermore, Hayduk (11) projects that an additional six million immigrants will join the workforce in the next two decades, an increment that will account for approximately one-third of the change in the labor force in each decade, up from a quarter in the 1980s. Employees in various sectors have to manage the diverse labor force of the new ethnic groups more so the immigrants of different Asian countries.
The development of globalization and neoliberalism has led to the increase in risky working conditions for the unskilled laborers in the U.S. economy. The U.S. was for a long time an agricultural nation until the latter periods of the nineteenth century, and the influx of the immigrants provided unskilled workforce who fared poorly due to low earnings. Approximately forty percent of the workers were low-wage laborers and seamstresses in the clothing industries who lived in appalling circumstances. The rise of industries caused women, children, and poor immigrants to get employment to operate the heavy-duty machines in the industries (Www.Usa.usembassy.de 10). The immigrants concentrated in the high-risk industries like the food processing, construction, agricultural fieldwork, and asbestos removal that predisposed them at risk of job-related injuries. For example, between 1992 and 2001 the number of immigrant workers killed at workplace increased to seventy percent with a concomitant drop in the number of fatalities for other employees in the U.S (Aguirre, and Ellen 3) Almost sixty percent of the fatalities involved the immigrant Latino workers. Such is a typical form of labor exploitation that the Latinos and the Asian Americans face in the risky labor conditions in this era of globalization (Aguirre, and Ellen 4).
The increase in the international economic competition, as well as corporate strategies that aim at maximizing profits by reducing the costs of labor, promote labor exploitation. In addition, flexible employment characterized by insecure and unprotected work in the neoliberal economy further exacerbates labor precariousness experienced by the Asian and Latino minority immigrants (Fernándeza, 780). The United States has adopted the neoliberal labor market that has generated different and uncommon forms of hiring and job growth in the workforce. The globalization of production has increased the income inequality since it increases the employers' powers over their workers. This has made the employers use threats to downsize the wages of the workers and reduce the power of the labor unions. On the other hand, the managers benefit from the situation because it allows them to upscale their wages, further increasing the income inequality. Furthermore, relocating the industries abroad enables many corporations to use labor contractors to hire foreign workers. This practice has become more prevalent within the labor-intensive industries like the automobile manufacturing, garment industries, and telecommunication industries (Aguirre, and Ellen 8). The development of multinational corporations worsen the precarious working conditions for the employees since they do not hire the laborers directly. The highly segmented global production chains that involve subcontracted labor further weakens the power of the organized labor. Aguirre and Ellen (10) reports that the rates of unionization in industries outsourcing labor are low as compared to the traditional factories that directly employ workers in Mexico.
The immigrant Latino and Asian workers have made some milestones in defending their rights and cultural identity within the global capitalism. The immigrant Asian and Latino workers have endeavored to revitalize the labor movements in the local and national levels. Such revitalization depends on organizing new workers and strengthening the labor unions (Aguirre, and Ellen 16). Additionally, they have forged new alliances between the social movements and organized labor. By and large, the workers strive to buy fair trade goods while boycotting the goods manufactured from unjust labor in an effort to seek justice. The immigrants have also gained access to various government resources and programs such as education to ease their assimilation into the subcultures or the dominant society (Priestley 56). The ethnic subcultures afford access to mutually shared resources like educational loans, entrepreneurial resources, and schools (Hayduk 28).In a bid to retain their culture, the Latinos continue to identify with their own nationality and shun political orientations of other minorities in the U.S. The black-Latinos also have a tendency to associate and identify culturally with their blackness, hence giving an increasing salience to the impression of Afro-Latinos (Priestley 57).
In conclusion, the immigration of the Latinos and Asian-Americans into the United States of America has created social and labor impacts in the nation. The influx has caused the restructuring of labor in the U.S economy since the establishment of the industrialization in the late nineteenth century. The Latino and Asian-Americans immigrants have also contributed to the diversity of the labor force in the U.S. Additionally, the development of globalization and adoption of neo-liberalization in the U.S led to poor working conditions, income inequality, labor exploitation, and weakening labor unions. However, the immigrants have fought back to retain their cultural identities and labor justice despite the unfair labor practices they endured under the auspices of the employers. Notably, they have forged associations of social movements with labor unions, gained access to government resources, and continuously identifying with their cultures despite the pressures of acculturation.
Works Cited
Aguirre, Adalberto, and Ellen Reese. "Introduction: The Challenges of Globalization for Workers: Transnational and Trans-border Issues." Social Justice 31.3 (97 (2004): 1-20. Accessed on May 10, 2016, from https://www.socialjusticejournal.org/SJEdits/97Edit.html
Fernándeza, Dídimo Castillo. "The United States: Economic Crisis, Productive Restructuring and the New Precarious Labor Conditions." Accessed on May 10, 2016, from http://www.davidpublishing.com/davidpublishing/upfile/1/14/2013/2013011482374673.pdf
Hayduk, Ronald. "Immigration, race, and community revitalization." Aspen Institute, Project on Structural Racism and Community Revitalization (1998): 33. Accessed on 5 May 10, 2016, from https://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/upload/Hayduk.pdf
Priestley, George. "Ethnicity, Class, and Race in the United States Prospects for African-American/Latino Alliances." Latin American Perspectives 34.1 (2007): 53-63. doi: 10.1177/0094582X06296335
Usa.usembassy.de. Outline of the U.S. Economy. N.p., 2016. Web. 10 May 2016 from http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/oecon/chap9.htm
